Originally Posted by Dave455
I have quite a collection of pens. I was never originally a collector, but rather a user, who built up a collection.
I bought pens that I wanted to use, and that I thought were special. I generally bought new, as I never wanted nibs that were broken in to someone else’s handwriting.
For most of the last three decades, there was one manufacturer that stood out above all the others for quality, and that was Omas.
In some respects the company felt as though it had been transported in a time machine from the 1930’s. Their method of manufacture was almost unchanged since that era, but where they had made changes, it was always to improve the overall quality.
The materials they used were unique, as were their designs. The manufacture was first class, their pens were flawless to look at, and wrote better than almost any other modern pen thanks to their superb nibs, porous vulcanite feeds, and an ink flow matched perfectly to the nib. They were, certainly in the 90’s, the only manufacturer to offer fully flexible nibs.
I didn’t like every design, some were very much to Italian tastes, and a little too fancy, but the quality was always there.
I ended up with about five different Omas pens, the last being purchased the month before they folded, but when I heard they had gone I went out and bought three more that day. I was glad to be able to buy what I did, but now so sorry that there are designs that I coveted that I now probably won’t own.
Would I buy now. Probably not. I doubt there is very much that is genuinely new and unused out there, and prices will be sky high if there is. Used prices have shot up too, driven by collectors trying to get certain models while they can, and of course speculators hoping to make profits, which they might!
There are some affordable pens out there, but for the most part they are ball points and roller balls which are of little interest either to the user or collector. They sell for what they’re worth.
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